


Hearts and Stars

by strix_alba



Series: Hearts and Stars [1]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Letters, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 20:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13597308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: The front of the postcard is a photograph of a brown bear holding its own feet. The back is postmarked from Wyoming. The writing is blocky and smeared with dirt.We’re alive. They’re watching you. Be careful. We’ll explain when it’s over. Love you lots.





	Hearts and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't quite finished S2 yet, but minor spoilers for the first half. Takes place after S2, unless it's been jossed by the canon I haven't watched yet, in which case it's an AU.

The first postcard comes one hundred four days after she tries to call the police for a wellness check on Amanda, and is informed that both of her children are not missing at all, but dangerous fugitives. The postcard is sitting in her mailbox when she gets to her office after the weekend, preparing herself for the departmental meeting that afternoon.

The front is a photograph of a brown bear holding its own feet. The back is postmarked from Wyoming. The writing is blocky and smeared with dirt.

_We’re alive. They’re watching you. Be careful. We’ll explain when it’s over. Love you lots._

There’s something else: a circle drawn on the printed description of the photograph, around two letters: the “at” in “birdwatching”.

She sits down heavily in her chair, knees suddenly weak, and manages to cover her face just before she bursts into startled tears.

~~*~~*~~

After the first message, getting the mail takes on greater significance than it ever has before. She rushes to get it when she gets home, if her husband’s car isn’t in the driveway. Credit card offers are opened, because what if? Maybe her children are going to send them messages inside a fake bill. They’re apparently criminals, who knows what they’re capable of? Not her. Not anymore.

But the next postcard, when it comes thirty-four days later, arrives when Mr. Spinelli from next door rings the bell on Saturday morning.

“Got this sent to me yesterday,” he says. “It’s my address, your names. I assume someone forgot your number.”

She snatches the postcard from him. “Thank you,” she says.

“You get anything else like this?” asks her husband, standing anxiously behind her in the doorway.

Mr. Spinelli shakes his head.

“If it happens again, let us know,” he says.

“Sure thing,” says Mr. Spinelli. “You have a good day now.”

In the foyer of their small ranch house, they huddle over the postcard together. Her hand is shaking so badly that her husband has to take the card from her so they can read it. The front of this one is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, colorized rather garishly. The postmark is from Illinois, in another small town that she’s never heard of.

 _We split up for now. Not safe yet but I’m with friends. There’s always that. I love you so much. Weather here sucks_. The _a_ in _safe_ is underlined, a casual swipe that might have been accidental.

“What did they get themselves into?” her husband says quietly.

She clutches his hand tightly enough to feel his bones shift. Her head spins and her chest is tight. “I have no idea.”

~~*~~*~~

The next letter comes to her husband at work only a few days later, and it has a smudge of dried brown along one edge that neither of them are willing to touch or mention aloud. It is not coffee, and it soaked through the entire corner and dried in stiff waves. The image is a black-and-white photograph of an astronaut that says “Greetings from Ohio!”, but the postmark is Canadian. The _t_ in _greetings_ has a small star drawn in the center of it.

 _I’m so sorry_ , the postcard says. _I love you and I will make it up to you when we’re done._

~~*~~*~~

For two months and three days, there is nothing. She teaches classes and she goes home and she goes to the grocery store and she goes to church just for the hell of it sometimes, and when she gets home the mail is on the table and there is never, ever anything there.

~~*~~*~~

Then: a postcard from Florida, delivered to her sister-in-law, sealed in an envelope, and mailed to the PO box that she and her husband hastily set up the next town over. This one is cut out into the shape of a kitten, a heart drawn on its paw, and she gives herself a paper cut on the corner.

_Still alive. We met up with him and his friends and had a party a few nights ago. I’m still angry at him. I’m still learning who he actually is. This vacation might last longer than we expected. I love you._

~~*~~*~~

A postcard from Texas, featuring a bull-riding cowboy and a ballpoint heart in the corner that she is learning to associate with her daughter. _I’m alive. Still not safe. My friends are a huge help. I can’t wait for you to meet them. I can’t wait to see you again. I love you._

A postcard from Saskatchewan that depicts a mountain lake: _Still alive. Not camping alone. Don’t worry_. There’s an asterisk in the corner of the card. She supposes that means it’s from her wayward son. She hates that this is a symbol she needs to know.

In their bedroom, they have a map of North America hung on the wall. She remembers what the first postcard had said, about being watched, and so they do not do what she longs to do: put in pins and thread, and in doing so trace the path of her two grown children around the country. But she scans the map until she finds the location of the latest postcard, and marks it in her memory. The postcards go in a box that they leave in the bathroom, underneath the sink, just in case.

~~*~~*~~

A postcard of a mariachi band arrives from Mexico City to their new PO Box, and she sees her husband cry for the first time since she brought the first one home, six months prior.

“How did they know?” he asks, voice breaking.

“I don’t know. Here. Here. It’s going to be all right.” She holds her husband and rocks him back and forth on the couch. She doesn’t look at the postcard until he has quieted and sat back, puffy-eyed, even though it hurts like a physical wound not to know, not to _know_ what it says. She doesn’t want to wait a second longer than she has to.

_I’m alive. Sweaty as hell, but alive. Slightly safer than we were before. Still with my crew and some new friends. I’ll tell T about the new address when I see him next. I love you like always._

~~*~~*~~

And so it goes. They keep on living like both of their children are still out in Seattle, eking out their lives to the best of their ability. They lie when asked how Amanda is doing, whether she still plays, and whether Todd still works at the hotel, the one where that big murder happened. And in their room they keep a map, and in her chest she keeps a persistent hollow ache that she talks about with a grief counselor, twice, and no one else.

~~*~~*~~

There’s a column of smoke rising in the north, along the ridges of the Rockies, when she drives home from work in the evening. She tunes the radio to the AM traffic station. Nothing. She looks it up online when she gets home, and then the next morning, and then in the evening.

Not a single news outlet reports on any fires in the area. No construction accidents, no warehouse fires, no forest fires.

She wonders if she was the only person to see it.

~~*~~*~~

Their children have been gone for eleven months and three weeks when they get a postcard from Montana. _See you soon!_ is all it says. No signature, no drawings, no marks, but the handwriting is familiar.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, as the crack in her heart tears open all over again, and goes down to the basement to dig out Amanda’s childhood drum set.

~~*~~*~~

That night, she has a dream. She is standing in a field, the night sky full of stars above her. She is alone, but it feels peaceful rather than ominous. She looks up at the stars, trying to find constellations, but as soon as she finds one, she loses track of it. Then she realizes that the stars are disappearing, and that’s why she can’t keep track. The cloudy trail of the Milky Way vanishes, and she knows with the certainty of the dreamer that there is nothing there: no stars whose light hasn’t reached them yet. There is _nothing_. Void. It grows, and it grows, spreading out from where the disk-edge used to be visible, and as it grows, she can hear a crunching, grinding noise all around her. The wind whips the grass around her legs.

“Stop!” she shouts, even though she’s not sure what she’s shouting at, or what she wants to stop.

Above her, the sky finishes ripping apart, and there is nothing but blackness. She spins in a slow circle, terror gripping her lungs and heart.

When she turns back around, Amanda is there. She is a teenager, still gawky and skinny and long-limbed. She stands in front of an invisible crowd. Her daughter runs up to her and grabs her hands and stares her full in the face. “It’s all connected, and I can feel it,” she says. “I _am_ the connections. It’s just like they said. We’re going to make it right. We’re going to connect the pieces and make it right.”

“How?” she asks. “The sky is gone.”

“It’s easier to see outside it all when there’s no sky. We’ll put it back when we’re done,” Amanda says. She throws up her hands and tilts her head back, grinning joyfully at the void.

The grassy field slides away from underneath their feet. She pitches forwards and wakes up kicking her husband’s shins, sweating through the sheets.

~~*~~*~~

A year and a day after their children disappeared, Mrs. Brotzman sits down to dinner with her husband. The doorbell rings. They look at each other and rise in sync. Maybe it’s Mr. Spinelli with another letter. Maybe it’s a really late UPS delivery, or something else entirely unrelated.

She opens the door, and there, on the doorstep, is Amanda, wearing a battered backpack and a leather jacket that’s too big for her. Half of her head has been shaved and tattooed in black and white. She has bandages wrapped around one forearm, scratches on her face like a cat got to her, and a baseball bat pounded full of nails in her right hand. She is grinning. Despite the injuries, she looks healthier than she has in a long time. Mrs. Brotzman’s heart burns once again; but it’s the hurt of a dislocation being popped into place, of a foot waking up after falling asleep.

“You wouldn’t _believe_ the year I’ve had,” says Amanda, right before she drops the bat and throws her arms around them both.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an un-beta'd sketch of something slightly larger that I would like to do, because holy shit Amanda is _so cool_ and I loved all of her mildly ominous scenes with the forest witch.


End file.
